To keep it breaking bad. Which is the bigger (faker) story. A Chem teacher to meth kingpin in a year. Or a decade long criminal to his first murder by his own hands?
That's all we saying. It's not a huge leap. He murdered his girls man so he could have her. Not to mention everything else. To say "ill be the only one to kill my son" ain't really a huge leap.
And yes he had to kill him. There's something called rep. Remember Carlitos way. U can't even be perceived as being soft. He wasn't Capone but he does business with him and bosses and killers worse than Capone. He can't be half a gangster and he saw that. Jimmy showed him that by taking his shyt so easy and nobody was scared of nucky when he did. They wouldn't pull that on Capone.
And no. Fear of getting killed would keep Eli quiet. Everyone was dead or back with nucky. He knew what was next if he started that snitch shyt. Nucky let him live and he knew it. Snitching would result in him being a nobody wot nuck in jail or dead.
The problem there is, this story ain't supposed to be grounded in reality. It's a Greek tragedy, a "fall from grace" story. A modern day "Macbeth". That he happens to be a school teacher turned drug dealer is incidental.
And besides, they've sold his transformation over the course of 5 seasons, not one scene. Peep how they framed the early scenes of him killing people....it was "them or him"....and he felt remorse....so it was easy to sympathize with him. Slowly they've tweaked the circumstances so it gets harder and harder to rationalize why he's killing people.
There is really no logical narrative reason why Nucky had to be the one to pull the trigger....he'd won, he was the boss, everyone else fell in line. Order his death via a hit man? Sure....but shoot a man at point blank range twice, with zero emotion? Nah man....they didn't sell that, at all, and it seems completely out of character.
Fred.

@ the S2 Finale),I know for me as someone who watched from Day 1 to Now its all about just having Patience,S3 is a big Reward in itself especially the Premeire which helped piece together what I saw in the previous ep
